The soul is compared to a feather which, if it is dry, will rise up lightly on the slightest breath of wind, but if it is wet it remains on the ground. So our souls if they are “dry” and pure of all concern with things that are not God, will rise up as it were instinctively, by His grace, to Him. This implies an optimistic view of our souls; they tend spontaneously to God when obstacles are removed, according to Cassian. He speaks of the work of asceticism as restoring the “natural motion” of the soul, by which it seeks God. This is not necessarily Pelagian. He is probably taking grace into account. He does not belong to the age that made clear technical distinctions between nature and grace.
Sources of Distraction
The Lord in the Gospel (Lk. 21:34) does not say that we must take care lest our hearts be weighed down with obvious and terrible sins, like blasphemy, murder, etc., but with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life. Now, as Abbot Isaac says, the monk is far away from opportunities for reveling and surfeiting, but he warns that there is a kind of spiritual gluttony and drunkenness of which he must beware. This is drunkenness that “does not come from wine” but is as the gall of dragons, a diabolical inebriation that comes from activism. In a word Abbot Isaac is saying that there may not be much chance of surfeiting and drunkenness for the monk, but he can be overwhelmed with cares for temporal things and begin to lose himself entirely in temporalities. The greatest danger to the monk’s life of prayer is the possibility of becoming too attached to his work. In order to avoid this attachment, work must be kept strictly to the necessary limits. A monk should mortify the instinct to work overtime or to undertake unnecessary projects. He must see that his jobs do not multiply on all sides. The basic principle: if a monk can support himself on a dollar a day, he should not work for two dollars. The restless soul ruins his life of prayer by constantly imagining there are new things that need to be done. All this is “the passion of worldly desire.”
At the other extreme are the monks who do not work at all, or rather who have no zeal for the common work. These, if they do not work for the monastery, are often taken up excessively with projects of their own and it is mere hypocrisy on their part to pretend that they can exempt themselves from the common work in order to “pray.” But it is the same disease in both cases: the itch of our human will to work and to produce unnecessarily when we cannot bear the spiritual labor of being alone with God and putting up with our own nothingness in His presence.
This example of “sickness of mind” which prevents prayer:
1) The hermit is very busy with something he has convinced himself to be “necessary work.” He is building useless additions on to his cell, and going in for useless repair jobs.
2) He is being driven to this work by the tyranny of the devil, who urges him on with a red hot torch. In other words it is a burning and compulsive need for work that keeps him from his prayer; he is running away from himself and from God. Excessive work is his means of doing so.
3) So powerful is the influence of this “devil” that even natural fatigue cannot persuade him to sit down and rest. The importance of this is evident, because some who are infected with the same sickness interpret their symptoms as “zeal” and “generosity.” But if they would listen to the voice of their conscience, and examine themselves with discretion, they would easily tell the difference between this and true zeal and generosity. For the latter is accompanied by peace and emptiness of self and is blessed by true obedience. Note: The cenobite can always extort permissions or commands to carry out the useless works to which he is attached. Yet in his heart of hearts he can tell that this is not true obedience.
4) This work of the devil is a mockery of God’s image in man—“terrible trickery.”
Cassian’s conclusion: This worldly activism, this “ambition” which seeks to escape the inner solitude of the soul by the mirage of external accomplishments, is therefore not merely a matter of undertaking works foreign to the monastic state. What matters, says Cassian, is our care in restraining the need for undue work that is at hand, and tempts us by the appearance of necessity. In other words, generosity in the contemplative life and true zeal for prayer demands that we mortify the instinctive urge to get into activities which tempt us here and now and appear to be useful and necessary. We have to learn to confine our works within the limits of necessity and obedience, and beyond that to give our preference to prayer.
Cassian points out that the activities which are compatible with the monastic state as such, can become distracting and inordinate if they are allowed to take up too great a part of our life and push prayer into the background. In fact they can be just as distracting as greater and more ambitious projects belonging to the apostolate or to life in the world. Naturally we should also be detained from purely recreational activities. Each one needs work and a certain relaxation of mind, but to avoid disorder, we must follow obedience alone. Useless projects prevent true purity of heart. They prevent the monk from resting in God. They make the soul forget that God is its life and its joy, and they make it turn to other sources of satisfaction. This is in fact a spiritual death. We must be careful to keep our souls delicate and docile, responsive to the invitations of grace, and for this end we must not allow ourselves to be too much carried away with projects and activities which dull the spiritual sensibility of the soul. Work within reason refreshes the soul and helps prayer, but as soon as work becomes an outlet for self-love it ruins purity of heart. Neglect to mortify and control this desire for useless activity is the ruin of many potential contemplatives in our monasteries. But when our hearts are truly pure, then we live among the angels and no matter what we do, whether we work or pray, everything is transformed into pure prayer.
The Different Kinds of Prayer
Abbot Isaac begins his discussion of different kinds of prayer with true humility. Unlike the writers of familiar manuals and the readers of them for whom prayer becomes in theory such a clear and simple matter, Abbot Isaac reminds us of the fact that prayer is a mysterious and secret activity of the soul alone with God, and that it is rash to talk too glibly about it, because in fact “It is not possible to understand the various kinds of prayer without tremendous contrition of heart and purity of mind and the illumination of the Holy Ghost.”
The first difficulty in explaining the “kinds of prayer” is that there is in reality an almost infinite variety. Prayer is always varying. It is a living reality and there are as many kinds of prayer as there are variations of spiritual states in all the different souls of men. The second half of chapter 8 is extremely wise, and Abbot Isaac reminds us that we pray differently under different circumstances, and in “classifying” prayer we must not forget these differences and these potential variations. In other words, we must not bind ourselves to pray always in the same way, or expect our prayer to fall always into the same pattern. We must not impose a rigid plan on our prayer life and try to make life conform to an abstract theory of our own, but we must on the contrary let our prayer be living, and let it grow out of our life in union with God. These cautions having been given, Abbot Isaac, following St. Paul, hesitantly suggests a possible division into four kinds of prayer, which may or may not cover the whole field of possibilities somehow. The four kinds of prayer (cf. 1 Tim. 2:1) are: Supplications, Prayers, Intercessions, Thanksgivings.
Supplication (obsecratio): The prayer of an earnest and contrite heart for the forgiveness of sin (783).
Prayers (orationes): Are especially those in which we offer, promise or vow something to God. Here the direction of the heart is to resolve something good and promise its accomplishment while praying for grace to carry it out, and desiring that God may be pleased with the offering, etc. “We pray when we renounce this world and pledge ourselves to die to all mundane acts and styles of living, and set ourselves to serve God with all our heart . . . ” etc. The value of this prayer is proportionate to the sincerity of our intention to put into effect our good resolutions.
Intercessio
ns (postulationes): Prayers offered for others in a time of fervor, whether for our own friends and relatives or for the peace of the world for the good of the whole Church. Here is where Cassian considers the monk’s role as intercessor for others, “for all men, for Kings and for those in high positions.” Here we have the monk’s apostolate of prayer, the monk as the one who brings down grace upon the sinful world by his intercession. This is not just the official line!
Thanksgiving (gratiarum actio): These prayers well up from the heart which remembers the gifts of God, or contemplates His goodness and mercy in the present, or looks forward to the future fulfillment of His promises. Thanksgiving is not merely a cold and formal acknowledgement of these good things, but a deep and ardent expression of love in which we pray “through unspeakable ecstasies.” This kind of prayer tends by its very nature to soar beyond words and clear concepts. It is marked by great purity (of faith, hope, and love) by immense joy, and by a kind of passivity (“our spirit is impelled”). They are prayers of fire.
The four kinds of prayer can be found alternately in one and the same person. Normally one of each type predominates in various degrees of the spiritual life. Supplication is more appropriate to the beginner who is not yet purged of his sins. Prayers are for the progressives who are advancing in virtue with confidence and faith. Intercessions are for the perfect who are able to pray for others with overflowing charity. Thanksgiving is for the purified soul (of the mystic?). These souls “with most pure minds are carried away with most burning hearts into that prayer of fire which the tongue of man can neither express nor comprehend.” Note the originality of this doctrine: in any state or level man can sometimes offer pure and devout prayer—always a coalescence of all four. Important: out of all four comes the loftier state: contemplation of God alone; charity that burns like fire.
Cassian goes on to remark, however, that in the contemplative’s “prayer of fire” all the kinds of prayer are likely to come together “in the form of an incomprehensible and most burning flame. . . . ” In this prayer the Holy Spirit prays in us with “unutterable groanings” and the soul with great strength rises up to God filled with innumerable intentions and thoughts all in one moment, which, when left to itself, the soul could not conceive in a long stretch of time! At the same time, he will tell us later that this is not pure contemplation. The prayer of fire is related rather to Theoria Physica than to the highest contemplation. Also, sometimes in the very lowest form of prayer (compunction), the soul is raised to these same heights of fire by the vision of the divine mercy. To the higher degrees of prayer we must travel in a patient and orderly manner beginning at the bottom and working up. It is a great mistake to rush on ahead of grace in the spiritual life. We may be able to convince ourselves for a while that we are getting somewhere, but in the end we will only have to go back and cover more laboriously and with greater difficulty the ground we had passed over too rapidly.
Jesus made use of all these forms of prayer. Cassian turns to an analysis of the Lord’s Prayer—a standard requisite for any early treatise on prayer. This is obvious because the Pater is the model of all Christian prayer. Let us never say it merely mechanically. The opening words, says Cassian, are an indication that it is God’s will that we seek the parrhesia (familiar speech, the liberty of sons) lost by Adam—God is our Father, and He wills above all that we be united to Him in love and contemplation. Here Cassian sums up the constant tradition of the Fathers. Perfect contemplation is, he says, a state more sublime than anything included in the four kinds of prayer he has been discussing; this highest prayer has the following elements:
1) Contemplation and love of God alone. (It is the pure contemplation of the Trinity, not the theoria of God in creatures.)
2) The mind is taken out of itself, abandons itself, in pure love of God, and gives itself over to the most intimate and familiar union.
3) The soul then “converses” (not with words) with God with a very special kind of love.
The Lord’s Prayer leads to perfect contemplation. Like St. Teresa of Avila [The Way of Perfection, ch. 25], Cassian affirms that if we pray the Pater really well it can lead us to higher degrees of prayer, notably to that prayer of fire already described. “This prayer (the Pater) leads those who practice it well to that higher state which we have described above, and brings them at last to that prayer of fire which is known and experienced by few and which is an inexpressibly high degree of prayer. . . . ”
We must not be ungrateful of the slightest chance to grow in prayer, and must not despise the humble and ordinary opportunities offered us by God to do so. We must be ready for these special moments and touches of grace that awaken us from inertia. Here are some of them according to Cassian:
1) They can come with a verse of a psalm, which can provide an “occasion for the fire of prayer.” The meanings of the psalms we sing are the primary and serious source of light in choral prayer. Hence St. Benedict’s advice: “so sing the psalms that mind and voice may be in harmony” [Rule, c. 19]. The Psalms’ principle is to make them so much our own that we experience them as poems we ourselves have written. This involves time, and patient rumination of texts, staying with one text until it is fully absorbed.
2) The fervor of our brethren in choir can excite us to greater compunction and attention in prayer—especially the distinctness and gravity with which they pronounce the psalms. (Cassian is thinking of the Egyptian office in which one monk chanted the psalm and the others listened.) With us the Gregorian melodies would have a comparable effect.
3) Spiritual conferences and exhortations given by the Fathers.
4) The death of someone dear to us can excite compunction and recollection and greatly aid our progress in prayer, reminding us of the last things and stirring us up to pray for or with the brother who has died and gone to his reward, sharing his victory in the Lord.
5) The remembrance of our own tepidity and negligence can excite in us salutary zeal for prayer.
In a word, Cassian declares that there are innumerable ways in which God stirs us up and awakens us out of our torpor, to keep us praying well.
Fervor is again equated with “compunction.” The holy hermits, possessed with “unbearable joy,” shout and cry out in their cells and can be heard at a great distance! At other times, the soul is overwhelmed by grace and reduced to total silence so that we cannot utter a word—profound interior silence. It is well to examine the language in which he describes this grace. He redoubles words for “silence,” hiddenness, and inwardness. The “mens,” that which is most inward in man, is “hidden in the secret depths of silence”—silences the sound of any word or the spirit may pour forth unutterable desires. Sometimes tears are the only outlet. He is talking of a simple form of contemplative prayer of beginners. Germanus readily admits he is familiar with this; however he thinks there is nothing more sublime. But he complains he cannot produce this at will. Is this possible?
In reply, Abbot Isaac describes different sources of “tears” with illustrations from the psalms. Some come from the memory of our sins. Some from the contemplation of our eternal reward, thirst for God and the desire of heaven. Some from fear of hell and of the Last Judgement. The sins of others can be a source of tears for us, also, [and] sorrow at the miseries of this present life. Finally, there are tears which are brought on by sheer force from “dry eyes.” Cassian is willing to approve even these as being not without merit, but only in the case of the hardened sinner who has little or no knowledge of God. Those who have progressed a little in the spiritual life and have a taste for virtue are “by no means” to force themselves to weep as this would be very harmful, for it would prevent them from ever arriving at the grace of spontaneous tears.
Abbot Isaac [then] reverently brings in the name of Anthony the Great, the supreme model and doctor of prayer for the ancient Fathers. Anthony could pray whole nights “in the same ecstasy of spirit”—carried out of himself. Anthony’s description of perfect prayer is qualifie
d by Isaac as a “heavenly statement which is beyond all that is human”—(in other words, inspired by God). “He said, ‘It is not perfect prayer in which a monk is conscious of himself or of what he is praying.’”1 In the opinion of Isaac, this is the last word on prayer, to which nothing further may be added.
__________
1 This principle exists in other religious traditions, too—for example, in some of Martin Buber’s most memorable tales of the early Hasidic masters.
LECTURE 15
Philoxenos of Mabbug
Mar1 Philoxenos—the Monophysite bishop of Mabbug, is honored as a saint and doctor of the Church by the Jacobites, Copts, and Ethiopians. Mabbug (Hierapolis, today Mambidj) is located between Antioch and the Euphrates. He was born in Persia, studied at Edessa, and became bishop in 485 (elevated by the monophysite Patriarch of Antioch). He was exiled in 519 (because of monophysitism) and died in 523 at Gangres.
The importance of Philoxenos is that he combined the Syrian tradition of Aphraat and Ephrem with the Greco-Egyptian philosophical thought of Evagrius and Origen. His homilies, preached or read to monastic audiences, are free of monophysitism. His monophysitism depended on the fact that he took nature and person to be the same, though frequently saying Christ was both God and Man. He was closer to the Council of Chalcedon than to the monophysites condemned by the Council. He was so opposed to Nestorianism that he feared the term “two natures.”
What are the three divisions of the spiritual life in Philoxenos? They correspond in general to the familiar beginners, progressives, perfect; or the three degrees of Pseudo-Denys: purgation, illumination, union; or those of Origen—Evagrius: praxis (ascesis), theoria physica, theologia; or St. Bernard: slaves, faithful servants (hired servants, mercenaries), sons. Philoxenos uses the Biblical (Pauline) division, as does William of St. Thierry: somatikoi (animal man) fight against sins; psychikoi (rational man) fight against thoughts and demons; pneumatikoi (spiritual man) have reception of spiritual gifts. This division is specifically Syrian and not Greek.
A Course in Desert Spirituality Page 14